Tag: italy

Postcard from Catania, Sicily: Ambling about Acireale

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A colorful vintage postcard featuring Mount Etna, with vineyards in the foreground and a bright blue sky.

Above: A version of a negroni created in honor of Mount Etna at Moro Acireale superimposed over a view of the simmering volcano in the distance.

Ambling sounded appealing, and, with a tenth of the population of bustling Catania, nearby Acireale beckoned. The predominant style of its architecture is Late Sicilian Baroque, sometimes referred to as “Earthquake Baroque.”

Then came an earthquake so horrible and ghastly that the soil undulated like the waves of a stormy sea, and the mountains danced as if drunk, and the city collapsed in one miserable moment….”

Account from an eyewitness to the 1693 Val di Noto Earthquake, The Genesis of Noto: An Eighteenth-Century Sicilian City, Stephen Tobriner, University of California Press, 1982

At the start of the new year in 1693, Mother Nature cursed most of southeastern Sicily with a triple whammy: Etna erupted; an earthquake believed to have measured well above 7 on the Richter Scale struck; and a tsunami hit. One way or another, more than 60,000 perished in the disaster.

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Postcard from Trieste, Italy: Flavors on northeastern edge of the Adriatic

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Vintage Italian postage stamp featuring red apples on a branch with green leaves.

Above: Squid ink paccheri pasta with shrimp and sun-dried tomatoes at Radici

On the northeastern edge of Italy bordering the Adriatic Sea and approaching Slovenia and Croatia, we’d expected the food to deviate more from the Italian dishes we were accustomed to. We were pleasantly surprised. We sampled only a handful of restaurants during our stay in Trieste but hope these photo reviews help you if you travel that direction.

We entered Ego Ristorante from a petite passageway on a rainy afternoon so didn’t even realize there were outside tables on a heavily trafficked pedestrian street on the other side. On the other hand, swarms of tourists huddled under umbrellas passed by without a clue of the small handsome interior space where we sat warm and cozy.

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Postcard from Padua, Italy: How could I forget Giotto’s Hell?

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A postage stamp depicting a scene from the Scrovegni Chapel, showing the Nativity with the Virgin Mary, Joseph, and angels, artistically rendered.

Above: The devil lording over Hell as depicted in “The Last Judgment” by Giotto (Ambrogiotto di Bondone, 1266-1337) in the Scrovegni Chapel

But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

Book of Revelation, Chapter 21, Verse 8

Slides in Professor Bill White’s Renaissance art course at Hollins University groomed me into a Giotto groupie prior to standing in awe before Giotto’s actual frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel. And Professor Henning surely pointed out Giotto’s horrific visions of Hell when I was on summer tour about a half-century ago, but I had sharper memories of gazing upward toward his Heaven.

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